Read all about it: Advertiser Book Club streamlined

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Books Editor

Today we introduce a new, streamlined Honolulu Advertiser Book Club.

It has been a year since we formed our loose-knit club — one you could participate in while sitting at home in your pajamas — reading along with us and sending in your comments for an in-print discussion every eight weeks or so.

In the time it took to read six books together, we've noticed two trends:

• You are buying and borrowing the books we suggest, with booksellers telling us that interest continues weeks and even months after we make our selections.
• But after an initial wave of interest, discussions have been lightly "attended" — that is, we aren't getting the volume of e-mail or letters we did at first, even though the books are still selling and are constantly checked out of the libraries.

This e-mail from Mona Targa of Wahiawa, who has never participated in a book-club discussion but has bought all six of the books, summed it up: "I love it that you're giving us ideas of what to read. I've come to trust your judgment and have enjoyed pretty much all the selections. But I can't seem to get to the book in the six to eight weeks you give us for discussion time; I'm always lagging behind. And while I enjoy reading other people's comments, the most valuable thing to me is just a suggestion 'from a friend' of what to read. Don't stop."

We're not going to. But this year, we're going to do things a bit differently: We're morphing the club into more of a readers' guide, with a monthly suggestion that is accompanied by an interview with the author or a story about the book.

A new selection will be announced, and the interview published, the first Sunday of each month in the Island Life section. Reminders, in case you miss the title that week, it will be published each week on the Sunday books page.

We plan to share the duty of selecting books, garnering suggestions from booksellers, librarians, celebrities and yes, you.

And we're going to take our book-club discussions online, to a special discussion board where you can post your comments and read other people's.

Our primary criteria will remain the same: We're looking for books that aren't Top 10 best sellers, or at least not yet; discoveries that are still under the radar or that never got the attention you think they deserved. We want books that are "discussable" — offer some depth, challenge the reader a bit, bring up issues or explore the internal landscape in some fresh way.

One change: We're ready to tackle nonfiction as well as fiction. So we'd especially like to hear if you think you've discovered the next "A Civil Action" or "The Perfect Storm."

For practical reasons, these two criteria also apply: The book must be widely available in paperback, preferably by a living author. However, we will consider posthumous works.